Rohingya issue

Rohingya issue

Address the cause as well as the effect

THERE are, reportedly, ten times the number of registered Rohingyas presently in Bangladesh whose unchecked movements have posed concerns to our law enforcing agencies for very obvious reasons. Although Bangladesh is not a signatory to the international refugee convention it has so far absorbed these people for more than two decades purely on humanitarian grounds, which has not been without its deleterious consequences.
The issue basically has to do with a people that are under a threat of extermination as an ethnic entity. The Arakanese Muslims are in severe strain with no basic rights and are, reportedly, facing an ethnic cleansing situation in their country, and pressure to leave their homesteads and eventually their homeland in which they have been living for hundreds of years. The silence of the international community is regrettable. And the action of the Myanmar government, being complicit in attacks on the Myanmar Muslims led by the monks, is reprehensible.
The government of Bangladesh is on the horns of a dilemma, hosting refugees has serious implications other than economic and security, it may in the long run allow the Myanmar government to persist in its refusal to grant citizenship rights to the Rohingyas.
Bangladesh being at the receiving end should conduct more robust diplomatic efforts and engage the international community to persuade Myanmar to actively stop the persecution of Rohingyas from their hearths and homes in Myanmar, which is the primary reason for their influx into Bangladesh.